What is the DWmegawad Club?
This is a place where we settle down, have a cup of tea (or drink of your choice) and take a month to play through a megawad on our own, together! Any keen observations, criticisms, or frustrated ranting about it goes here in the discussion. As long as you want to say something about what you've played, feel free to speak your mind.

Can I join?
Sure. The only rule is that you have to play at least some of the levels in our monthly megawad to contribute, but you're generally encouraged to finish the whole thing, even if you've played it before.

What levels am I allowed to post about?
Whatever day of the month it is, is the upper limit for the map you can post on. So if it's the 6th, you may discuss up to MAP06.

Do I have to post an entry every day?
Nope, not at all. This is only for our more enthusiastic members. As long as you play through it with us you’re part of the club.

Kama Sutra (besides being a very informative book) is a megawad created by a pair of Czech speedrunners in 2005, Adolf "Gusta" Vojta and Jakub "method man" Razak. The levels are somewhat hard and slaughtery, so expect a lot of deaths.

Sorry DWMegawad Club but I'm going to have to sit this one out. Two horror games are coming out this month that I'm going to play the heck out of (Outlast & Amnesia- A Machine For Pigs), atop which I need to be cracking on with some Doom LP projects on my channel.

I also can't wait to hear the reviews on level 30, as I'm somewhat familiar with this wad despite having never really played it outside of some ZDaemon co-op games a few years back. It's hard, that's for sure!

I'm glad that I was contributing to DWMClub last month, but now I'm not gonna continue. Both because I'll have less time once school year start and because I'm not that keen on KSutra in particular. However I admit, I'm curious how reviews on levels 28-32 will be, too.

Well here we go
Map01 - “Into the Underground” by Adolf Vojta / Jakub Razak
And I've already died :P
Some nice zerk punching exercise before you rob a sergeant of his shotgun. I was being a bit cute with the punch and yet again managed to exploit the hitbox of enemies perfectly by punching thin air and got killed.
Overall this level is pretty easy, note that there is an ssg in nearly every level I think which was a rule applied to this mapset and load and behold that is one of the secrets.
Missed one secret, I can't remember where it is.

A small brick outpost full of former humans and imps. Challenge comes from the level's dependence on the berserk pack while filling the main building with damaging slime for the player to surf on. The blursphere secret seems to exist solely to get you killed and I've no idea what half of the buttons do. You press 'em because you're the doom marine, and the monkey flips the switch. >:)

It's a rough but fair start, a punch practice level with lotsa medikits. Texturing is nothing special but the gradient lighting looks really beautiful while causing no issues in doom2.exe. Exit has a cute land-under-land illusion.

Here's me playing through the level badly on UV. It may be the only video I make of this wad because I remember level two. =P

Cool, played this wad some time ago and can't remember much about it other than map30. UV pistol starts ahoy.

Map01 - “Into the Underground” by Adolf Vojta / Jakub Razak

This map is a lot better when you pick the berserk up from the start. Its always counter-intuitive doing that as you don't need the health, but unless I missed something there's a lot of monsters to get through before you get hold of a shotgun. I remember this map put me off playing the wad the first time I tried it, maybe because I didn't pick up the berserk and had a tedious time peashooting imps, but also the design itself seemed kind of ugly with all the mishmash of textures and blocky structures going on. I stuck with it and remember enjoying the rest of the wad though.

That invisibility secret is a bit goofy, pressing on the bottom of a window frame to jump through a barred midtexture is the kind of thing you would only ever do by accident.

Alright, time to get this bad boy started. UV pistol starts for me as well and though I'll try not to use saves, I'm not very confident I can do it when the shit really hits the fan. I'm pretty familiar with this wad so no FDAs from me this time.

Map01: Into The Underground -- 100%, 100%

A nice warmup map to start with. Pretty easy if you're competent with your fists since that's the main dish and the dessert in this map. There's an ssg present too but it's likely that when you do finally get your hands on it, everything in the map is already dead. I didn't do a full-blown Tyson-run though, since the few Sarges wandering in the yard tasted their own medicine to prevent extra suffering on my part. I remembered the secrets pretty well and had no problems finding them but they're all useless, to be blunt. Blursphere is only an additional annoyance and I could live without the chainsaw, backpack and ssg quite happily.

I think that design-wise, this map shows what you're in for with this wad quite well too. I mean, it's definitely not the greatest looking wad of all time and the structures are kind of peculiar but everything works and serves the gameplay experience, which is without a doubt this wads strongest suit. So a solid start, we're not exactly dropped straight to the deep end here but we'll get there soon enough.

Okay, HNTR difficulty this time (I've played it way too often on HMP and even UV already), still save/load abusing, and will be playing each level twice, once a speedy trial, and one attempting no-hit runs on the same map. The later option may not be possible on some maps.

Let's rock this freakshow.

MAP01 Into The Underground

*Tyson Run*

Regular run Missing? Impossible! On HNTR, Tyson style isn't too hard, seeing as how the strongest monster is a demon in this case. So I did this HNTR-Tyson run without the use of a shotgun :). Figuring I get a berserk in the beginning, it would be more fun to punch things. But really there's nothing much interesting at all about this run as I'm just punching imps and demons and such. Final Time 1:45.

*Reality Run*

Again, not hard, all that matters really is the zombieman not fire back at me in the beginning quickly until I get the shotgun, and then the super shotgun. I could use the zerk to punch the zombie in the beginning, but nothing later on. Everything else, taken care of without impunity. Final Time 2:04.

Does anyone know of a proper way to reach the SSG secret? I run to it touching the edge of the teleporter, not teleporting, and make my way up there using the slight elevation from the teleporter. I've seen demos of this map doing the same thing, and I'm wondering if there's an alternative to that.

I died the first time because I was trying too hard to use my fists..
I got the super shotgun but I have not a clue about the two remaining secrets, I think the skull switch at the begining has something to do with that. it's a short and nice level and it suits the map01 slot properly.

MAP01: Into The Underground UV
kills 100% secrets 66%
I actually didin't die , because I played that game when I was like 10 y.o and played through 10+ maps.
Kind off a tnt map01 ripoff : They both use berserk as the primary gun.
That invurnul ability really helped me in this map due to zombiemen and shotgunners.
Pretty challenging for a first map.
That exit pit looks really bad tho.
I was dissapointed by that chainsaw secret.

Pretty sure this is the first time I've already played the wad of the month, time to see how much I remember besides Map 30. ZDoom, save/reload as I like, UV, continuous.

MAP01: Into the Underground
100% kills, 1/3 secrets

Hmm. Punching stuff is always fun, but beyond that, not much of a good first impression. The texture use is a bit scattered, with red brick outside, green brick inside, brown brick outside. There's also what I consider some amateurish mistakes/oversights, such as a really bad looking floor texture rule violation between the green marble and brown brick floor, and one door doesn't have it's sides lower unpegged like every other door. There's a nice little visual trick with the underground exit, that looks good from most angles but really bad from a couple side views. The secrets are somewhat pointless.

This wad is mostly new for me, I recall zipping through a few levels a few years ago, and I know all about the final level, but otherwise, it's all a fresh experience for me.

The first half of this level played out like a tyson fest, and it got especially difficult in the left and right side battlements with all the imps crawling all over me. Despite the monster progression being mild, with only a hell knight being serious opposition, there were quite a few moments where it seemed I was a goner due to the small fighting spaces.

Design-wise, we start off in a city-esque setting, and enter an ancient fortress of sorts, with vines in the more interior locations, and plain stone walls on the outside. It's not necessarily the most visually stunning areas, but since slaughter-fests seem to be the name of the game, I didn't find this a big deal.

I couldn't find the secret in the caged room above the starting room, and every other secret was much more difficult to locate than I had anticipated. Which is fine by me, I don't want to find all the secrets on my first playthrough. Overall, while not visually among the best, it is a good challenge, and nice teaser on what will later come.

I'll have a go at this one after missing last month (in addition to how many years of saying "NO" after a co-op followed by SP run back in 2009), but my tolerance for bullshit in PWADs is much lower than it was.

mouldy said:That invisibility secret is a bit goofy, pressing on the bottom of a window frame to jump through a barred midtexture is the kind of thing you would only ever do by accident.

So that's how you get it...I spent way too much time looking for a switch or something-or-other to get that lowered. Even after I killed everything...

Anyway:

Into the Underground - K:100% S:66% (Ultra-Violence)

This map made me realize I should never try Tyson runs. I didn't die but my average health hovered < 50% (The armor was a godsend) until I cleared most of the level and made use of the medpacks at the top ends of the stairs afterward.

I don't know what it is, but one of my favorite Doom battles consist of taking on a Hell Knight with just a shotgun.

Going to partake in this one as I'm a big fan of the megawad in question but have not played it sinice 2011. There're are some awesome demos for this wad as well, so if you're into that sort of thing and haven't watched 'em yet, do it.

The armor's the greatest thing in the world here as it's bound to keep most alive the whole way through. Fun map for tysoning, Every secret has a worthy reward (yes, even Mr. Invisibility) and is designed to make your trip worth it. The visuals on the exit are clever, albeit they can look dreadful depending on a multitude of things (source port, angle, etc.). Decent start to what is, ultimately, a great megawad.

According to a comment presumably left by Gusta on KS's idgames page, the version of Kama Sutra on idgames isn't up to date, and players should look for ksfinal.zip for the finished version. Google turned up a copy here: http://www.doom2.net/~wads/ksfinal.zip

MAP01 really didn't do it for me. I didn't like the texturing or symetrical outside area, berserk punching has never been my thing, and I managed to find the SSG secret but not invis (and really, would invis even help much in this map?), which is...backwards. Putting the exit door switch on the back side of the switch column seemed like an excuse for pointless backtracking through an empty map.

I've heard good things about this wad, so I hope it improves from here. Always disappointing when MAP01 of a megawad is a letdown - it's the most important slot.

Also, the link in the OP is broken. "hhttp". Should we switch over to that version essel linked or keep going with the one on /idgames?

Just to ask some questions there ... I am male (and method surely too), we are not gays (as somebody thought) and the title picture and map30 are good characters of typical czech sense of humour and irony. we hoped that nobody will take it seriously :) Anyway, thanks for nice comments!!! It's surely a motivation for some more work from us. Btw. I reccomend you to download the final version (ksfinal.zip - released 24.3) instead of this one. Gusta

The idgames version may indeed have been updated since that was posted, though.

This is probably the 6th or 7th time I've done Kama Sutra's MAP01. I've always finished this map and the subsequent ones, but I always seem to stop at around MAP06/07 and skipping to the later maps where my corpse gets tossed around a little.

Small opening map; nothing special. The music choice I feel was poor and could be better. I didn't bother grabbing any of the secrets either because I think I'll grab the SSg through normal progression.

I too backtracked for the exit switch on the backside of the column, and finished with around 45 shells. Random map design from city-esque to marble to brick to sewer? I don't understand the design decisions.

I will agree with this. I know that KS uses a lot of Duke3D tracks, but "Missing? Impossible!" just has to be one of the worst tracks to use, it gets old fast and in this case of MAP01, doesn't fit at all. Same thing with "Taking Names" (on MAP04). Just my bias though.

Just to clarify, I dropped out of the last one because the BTSX maps were making me feel inadequate. Damn you to heck Essel. :P

Map01: Into the Underground

The theme switching is a tad weird, I'll admit. The gameplay is alright and I managed to max the map without pulling out too much hair. :P The trick near the end is pretty neat too, I need to look into it more. Overall, not the best MAP01 but still pretty decent.

It's the 2nd where I am, soo...

Map02: The Hidden Engine

Yikes. This one is nowhere near as subtle as MAP01 and throws you into the action straight from the getgo. The layout isn't fantastic(basically one central room with passages snaking out of it), but it's good mindless fun. Sometimes it feels like you need to know the traps beforehand though, which isn't great. So yeah, not as nice as MAP01.